This Is What Our Souls Need

Does your soul ever thirst for worship? Sometimes it can be the part of our spiritual life that gets overlooked. All too often we come into God’s presence with our list of needs and wants, in a hurry to get down to the business of asking for His help with our problems.

And He certainly wants to bear our burdens, give us guidance, grant us peace.

But how sweet it can be to take time just to be with Him. To set aside the prayer requests, and quiet our minds. To be still. To think about God’s greatness and His holiness, His love and His mercy.

That’s what I needed one morning last week.

One way I like to worship God is to take a Bible verse that’s full of praise, and meditate on it. The verse may talk about His mighty works, or it may describe one of His attributes. In fact, I wrote a whole post about that titled 10 Bible Passages of Praise for Worshiping God. You can read it here.

I also like to worship through music, and that’s what I chose to do last week.

Our daughters’ high school choir sang Only God in the recent state fine arts competition. I’d listened to it several times, and had it saved on my phone. In a quiet moment, I was able to really focus on the words. I was reminded again what a great and powerful God we serve.

Whenever I hear songs like this one, I like to imagine heaven filled with all of our voices lifted in worship. What an amazing sound that will be!

These verses go well with the song below.

“For you are great, and do wondrous things; you alone are God.” ~ Psalm 86:10

“O Lord of hosts, God of Israel, the One who dwells between the cherubim, You are God, You alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth.” ~ Isaiah 37:16

Holy is He and great is His glory
Holy is He and worthy of our praise
I stand in His presence amazed

And crown Him with worship and praise
Holy is He, Holy is He, Holy is He.

Who pardons my iniquities?
Who heals me from within?
Who lifts my fallen life
And sets me on my feet again?
Who leads me like a Shepherd
When I’ve gone astray?
My Lord, my God, my Jesus,
The One I praise today!

Holy is He and great is His glory
Holy is He and worthy of our praise
I stand in His presence amazed
And crown Him with worship and praise
Holy is He, Holy is He, Holy is He.

Who hears me in my loneliness?
Who finds me where I hide?
Who knocks outside my broken heart
‘Til I let Him inside?
Whose life deserves the honor
Laid before His throne?
My Lord, my God, my Jesus,
My Savior and my Own!

Holy is He and great is His glory
Holy is He and worthy of our praise
I stand in His presence amazed
And crown Him with worship and praise
Holy is He, Holy is He, Holy is He.

Those are all good ones!! It’s interesting that “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” wasn’t as much a favorite when I was younger, but the older I get, the more I realize the incredible blessing it is to have a faithful God who never changes!

These are beautiful! Obviously singing on Praise Team, worship through music is huge for me; but I also worship daily as I drive around town, noticing and thanking God for His wonders. Just this morning, my normal route was thwarted by a crazy traffic accident; I thought I would be very late, but the backstreets I ended up taking were actually beautiful, and I just felt the peace of God wash over me as I thanked Him for the gorgeous trees framing this drive that’s usually very commercial.

Yes! I’ve *always* been a nonstop music-on person, but that’s why this feels like such a revolutionary difference in worship for me: I’ve found myself in the last year purposely turning off my radio for the silence of looking around & thanking God!!! :-O Soooo not natural for me…but when I feel led, it’s BEAUTIFUL!!!